A New Age hero leaps
off the screen here -- complete with a tattooed queen. He arrives courtesy
of outstanding British and European casting. Americans should enjoy a
run for their money in interpreting this famous legend, which hardly belongs
to the U.S.A. This film challenges Camelot (1967). It competes
in the same genre as Robin and Marian (1976) -- another
bold venture in humanizing mythology.

Get ready for controversy!
If you insist that the Round Table suffers principally from adultery,
this movie will set you on your ear.

Instead, King Arthur
addresses the powder keg issues of the Middle Ages. Do we accept imperialism
as legitimate government? Should members of the clergy command private
armies? Must soldiers obey self-destructive orders? What role does woman
assume when man fights for national independence? If all these questions
sound familiar, maybe Arthur's rise to popularity signals the Second Coming
of 452 A.D.

In this year, as the
film informs us, the Romans withdrew before the Saxon onslaught. With
one foot in the past and the other straining toward the future, Clive
Owen as Arthur (Gosford Park, The Bourne Identity)
struggles with a last soldierly assignment. Obliged to rescue two men
from behind enemy lines, his wrath grows with each nip-and-tuck episode.
A virtual Achilles, he searches carts and caverns until his perfect match
emerges.

As Guinevere, Keira
Knightley (Bend It Like Beckham, Pirates of the Caribbean)
clings to her new lord, not Lancelot, played by Ioan Gruffudd (Black
Hawk Down, Titanic). With this change in the plot,
marriage no longer stands at the center of the Arthurian saga. Instead,
politics engulf all the characters in outrage. As the Saxons draw ever
nearer, the retreating Romans appear increasingly cowardly -- a new portrayal,
too. Justice and courage triumph here as universal themes.

This plotline celebrates
the fact that the United Kingdom suffered nation-building, one terrible
step at a time. A devil-and-the-deep-blue-sea conflict swarms overland,
led by Stellan Skarsgard (Good Will Hunting, Amistad)
and Til Schweiger (Lara Croft Tomb Raider, Investigating
Sex). These two head the canon of Oedipal figures competing for
the right to die.

Throughout this colorful
quest for glorious liberty, the purest pleasure for the audience remains
the hill-and-dale green of Arthur's historical Celtic landscape. Filming
this story in Ireland must be reckoned one of the savviest choices of
this epic production. If you can't spare the time or the fare either,
simply purchase your own copy. Then, you can fly like Merlin to the one
place on earth where verdure achieves such luxuriant fantasies. It's no
wonder, really, that King Arthur lurks forever in this foliage!